Hello! :3I'm sort of new in this community and i'm pretty sure i'll stick around for a long time haha. Found it in google while browsing for tutorials and usefull information about java gaming development (that account activation quiz made me laugh at my own stupidity btw lol)

Not sure if this is the right section to post this but it seemed the most appropriated one haha sry if i'm wrong.

So i'm very interested in game development, i dropped the idea years ago because there aren't any kind of studies related to game development in my country, everything is directed to company sided coding (you know like creating billing systems and such *puke*) but i recently found myself getting that idea again and i decided to set it as my goal, i want to develop games for living but i am still standing on somewhat shaky ground as in where to start so i'll very much appreciate some guidance.

to give a general idea i've been coding programs every now and then since 2008, i've made simple games in visual basic and c# such as Hanged, tic tac toe, rock/paper/scissors, the simple stuff. I've coded utilities for windows and some silly mathematical stuff every now and then. The languages i've coded in are c++, c#, visual basic and since 4 days ago i've spent about 14 hours a day coding in java. I have a good grasp of the basics so im set with that.

My goal is to code 2D games, even tho in some places says those aren't as good as 3D i strongly disagree, id rather play some good gba game such as Golden Sun again rather than Devil May Cry 4, of course thats not all the time but i think 2D games do have a lot of potential.

I do not want to make games based off an already made engine, id like to learn to do everything from scratch by myself no matter what it takes.

I've watched and finished few dozen of basic gaming tutorials but they don't really hmm "enlight" me as in they don't answer all the questions i have, and looking for very specific questions in google is massively time consuming.

I have very very limited resources (money-wise lol) so i can't really afford to buy a book that i'm not sure if will help me or not (sorry if that comment seems stupid, i never read a programing book in my life so i have no idea). So i would like to know if is actually worth spending $75 in a book? (to give an idea of how expensive that sounds to me $75 is 1/4 of a full time employee's monthly paycheck).

I got this book: Killer Game Programming in Java somewhere in the internet but there are some books that are just not possible to find that seem interesting.

Will it be worth my time to actually read 1000ish pages of a book or do i just keep looking/watching for tutorials? (like i said, sorry if it sounds really stupid and ignorant D: i have never read a book about programing, all i know comes from google lol)

How should i set my way to study?

Sorry for the long post lol. I am open to suggestion and knowing your personal experiences, itd help me greatly!

if you want to create games for living and have a low budget and finite time/resources, then avoiding existing engines wil make sure you'll fail!!!

my advice would be to jump into libGDX instead. it will give you neccessary boilerplate code, good performance using opengl and android support out of the box. and if you really want or need to, you can still drll down to the low level by doing opengl and gpu shaders yourself.

but dont be fouled, if you want to do games for a living, you'll need every help you can get as well as spending HUGE amount of time to polish and balance your game. AND THEN you'll also need a truckload of art etc.

so save your time at coding and concentrate on gameplay/design and art/style. maybe leveraging prior expertise by creating a sound related casual game...

I don´t really have a great relationship with general purpose game programming books. They come out strong and say they will cover everything but in the end that means they doesn´t really cover anything. On top of that most Java game programming books focus on the Java API for game development but if you browse the forum you´ll find that few belive that this is a good idea. The really good game programming books I´ve come across are the one that focuses on specific areas, like "Real time collision detection" (a hard core collision detection book) and... Some AI book I can´t remember that name of on top of my head. One general purpose book I am interested in though, but haven´t had a chance to check out, is "Beginning Android Games" by one of the creators of LibGDX, Mario Zechner. It looks promising... Anyway, since you have so much Java experience there are a lot of tutorials out there that will get you started on understanding the basics of a real time game and I would also suggest reading a lot of game code.

Regarding the fact that you want to don´t want to use a library I would suggest starting out with LWJGL, a Java port for OpenGL. OpenGL may sound like it´s for 3d only (it did to me when I got started) but it´s just as good for 2d games and is really the only way to go if you want to get serious.

So i'm very interested in game development, i dropped the idea years ago because there aren't any kind of studies related to game development in my country, everything is directed to company sided coding

welcome aboard bro

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...but i think 2D games do have a lot of potential.

YES !!!

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I do not want to make games based off an already made engine, id like to learn to do everything from scratch by myself no matter what it takes.

i know that feeling , you feel "stupid" if you use an already made engine, but you know, time is very important, and if my thoughts are in their place, i think we are in the same situation, am computer science student, and i hate everything they teach us in college ( "how to create and e-mail " ) and i DON'T want to work for a shi*ty job in the future (that if i found one) so i decided to try making games for living, it's not something that you can decide and be sure of it, it's just like being a successful artist, you work so hard, and wait for people to appreciate your job, now am in the learning state, i still didn't finish any java game project, i've been wondering and asking a lot, i start with Java2D and now am learning LWJGL, and the reason am starting from scratch is that am not in a hurry, i still have a lot of time (am 19) maybe one day i'll be able to be a part of a good team and sell our games and maybe not cause you know, things just get shi*ty somehow so my personal opinion would be, if you want to start making game right now and make money from them in the fastest way you can, you should work with a game engine (unity3D is awesome) or at least use a library that will make your job a lot easier (libGdx)

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if you want to create games for living and have a low budget and finite time/resources, then avoiding existing engines wil make sure you'll fail!!!

unfortunately, that's true, " low budget and finite time/resources " will make your job feels like hell, so i think the biggest problem is time, you should know when you're gonna be able to develop any idea you have at mind (i hope i'll reach that level by the end of this summer)

about books,i never read a game programming book, i only read books about the basics of the language and usually i'll find them for free (i speak french better than english so le site du zero.com always have what i need in terms of books.

Good luck

"It's not at all important to get it right the first time. It's vitally important to get it right the last time."

Oooh i see, about the low budget is true sadly, about the time is quite limitless atm lol, not doing anything besides my own studies regarding gaming development, i don't work. About the visuals i have friends very interested in developing games with me so they will work for it, basically all i need to do is take care of the coding.

Since you guys mention i shouldn't avoid already created engines i will drop my pride and do it, i didn;t want to use them because id feel like i'm doing something without knowing its internal work and that kind of disturbs me (personal way to be i guess).

About the book hm i think i shall take a look at 1 at least to see how it goes, will read the one i linked in my main post and see how it turns out for me (guess i should have done that lol but i did want to ask for personal experiences on others).

thank you all for your responses and specially alaslipknot for the links, i will certainly look at what you linked and study it.

Very intresting to see you manup and still use the libraries even you didnt want to from the beginning. I thought the same way as you and im now creating my own library :/ Its not as easy as you thought..

Btw does anyone know if there is a way to encrypt the images in the jar file? just for the game to be able to read the images and not people being able to take them off it. is it possible?

This is exactly what you should try to avoid: making your mind about stuff thats not related to the core gameplay/design.

There was a lot of discussion about how to secure a games content, it's networking, the highscore-table etc. Common wisdom is: just dont!

If your game is so successful, that people want to pirate or rip stuff out of it, you are a winner! Chances are, that nobody is interested in doing so - at least for your first game. And even if - what should they do with the art? If they do a fan game inside of the same universe - you should encourage and support them! If they use it as "placeholders" in their own hobby-game, you should feel honored.

Just provide some copyright and licensing readme along with your game and inside your games jars, so you can legally claim ownership of the content.

u_u it feels bad to give up on that (for now, i still want to do my own in a far future haha).

Btw does anyone know if there is a way to encrypt the images in the jar file? just for the game to be able to read the images and not people being able to take them off it. is it possible?

You can encrypt almost everything, but it does not matter anyways, since you need to decrypt them to use in your game anyways.People simply find your decryption code, and all your work is for nothing.If you made those images, they are automaticly your interlectual property, so copyrighted (well in my country, but i think this rule is globally used).So no worry's, first thig to do is try making something thats worth stealing to others haha

This is exactly what you should try to avoid: making your mind about stuff thats not related to the core gameplay/design.

There was a lot of discussion about how to secure a games content, it's networking, the highscore-table etc. Common wisdom is: just dont!

If your game is so successful, that people want to pirate or rip stuff out of it, you are a winner! Chances are, that nobody is interested in doing so - at least for your first game. And even if - what should they do with the art? If they do a fan game inside of the same universe - you should encourage and support them! If they use it as "placeholders" in their own hobby-game, you should feel honored.

Just provide some copyright and licensing readme along with your game and inside your games jars, so you can legally claim ownership of the content.

i don't mind about that at all, i was wondering because i won't make the designs myself and so the person that will was asking me about it but ill talk to him xD

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